published on
Catalog number: MNSXLP004
Artist name: The Observatory and Koichi Shimizu
LP Name: Demon State
Label: Midnight Shift
Release date: 23 September 2022
A1. Panopticism
A2. Demon State
A3. 1-330
A4. Lichen
B1. Animal
B2. Imprisoned Mind
B3. Psyberia
B4. Demon State (Demonstrate Remix)
“There was something extra-political, extra-social, almost extra-human about it; it smacked of tidal waves, of natural forces . . . These emotions are my instruments.”
— Richard Wright, The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference (1956)
The Observatory is one of those last few bands that can change and become your life. Stuck in Singapore, the wilful outlier of Southeast Asia, this ever-shifting group stubbornly evolves past its roots, most recently in an more improvisational, instrumental, and noise-adjacent territories in an EP with collaborator Haino Keiji.
In DEMON STATE, Dharma and Cheryl Ong plus Yuen Chee Wai continue The Observatory’s bold partnerships, this time with electronic musician Koichi Shimizu (IMPRINT). Together, they finally reach this long-gestating, total (yet I’m sure temporary), and rhythm-focused, electronic reinvention of The Obs—while briefly nodding to their past. The road is long; DEMON STATE is one pit stop in glorious hell.
Partly stemming from a casual, improv studio session with Koichi in early 2020, the eight tracks on DEMON STATE—their first release on the Midnight Shift label—were formed from a gradual accumulation of sonic layers; they were foraged, recycled, and pieced together remotely also from solo bedroom recordings, a historical sample, nonhuman beats and effects, as well as journals and junk.
A vinyl and digital release, DEMON STATE features the cover-art illustration of Enka Komariah (Senyawa, Raja Kirik). As they describe it, the “sense of wretchedness in this, the waste of capitalism, the evils of racial discrimination, the ever-spiralling mess, the awakenism of control” are confronted, head on in the band’s pattern, to disturb, comfort, confuse, worship, dance, rest, and resist.
Ultimately, the singular form of DEMON STATE refers to our personal, individual, and ineffable states of demonic possession. DEMON STATE embraces us in the independent space of The Obs, where we can be alone together. It offers its listener some type of solace, if not an exorcism. For when the devil has been in us for this long, who’s to say who’s possessing who, who’s whispering sibilant sounds in our ears, who’s wearing the mask, who’s not yet dead and who’s still alive? Who’s still fighting for a just world?
Credits:
Composed, arranged and performed by The Observatory and Koichi Shimizu
Recorded in Singapore and Yamanashi by The Observatory and Koichi Shimizu
Edited and mixed by Koichi Shimizu
Mastered by Simon from The Exchange
Art direction by Yuen Chee Wai
Layout by Takashi Makabe
Illustration by Enka Komariah
Press text by Dan Koh
Words by Yuen Chee Wai
Imprisoned Mind contains an excerpt of the speech by President Sukarno at the opening of the Bandung Conference (Afro-Asian Conference) 1955.
Koichi Shimizu – otolary.wixsite.com/koichishimizu
The Observatory are Cheryl Ong, Dharma and Yuen Chee Wai – theobservatory.com.sg
Produced by Kavan Spruyt (Midnight Shift)
All rights reserved The Observatory and Koichi Shimizu 2022.
- Genre
- Exorcism